Future U: Library 3.0 has more resources, greater challenges

Libraries are changing, despite their facades. And they're changing to high-tech service companies with embedded librarians, according to some library professionals. Of course, that assumes they aren't defunded out of existence.

For ladies and gentlemen of a certain age, the library is changing too fast. For kids, it's not changing fast enough. University students are caught in the middle. Their library experience must be like surfing: riding the edge of a moving wave, never quite cresting, never quite crashing. Such a state has to be thrilling, but ultimately exhausting.

One popular image of the library of the future comes from the cartoon Futurama. The temporally misplaced character from our own time, Fry, enters Mars University’s Wong Library with his friends. It contains the largest collection of literature in the universe. Zoom in on two CDs, one labeled “Fiction” and the other “Non-fiction.”

In many ways, the library of today looks much the same as the library of yesteryear. The card catalogs may be consigned to a basement storage area and the tables where they used to stand are studded with computers. But otherwise there are carrels and stacks, stairs and information desk, patrons and librarians.

Transition is underway: from a place where you go to get information to a place you go to create; and from a place you go to create to a service you use.

From kids to adults

Sarah Houghton, the director of the San Rafael Public Library in California and the blogger behind Librarian in Black, said the little kids who come into her library expect three things.

“Every screen is a touchscreen,” she told Ars, “and when it’s not they get confused as hell. Kids expect instant delivery of everything. If you can’t get it right that second, it doesn’t exist. When you tell them that a thing they want doesn’t exist digitally, that it’s a physical thing and that’s it, it blows their mind. If there is some book they need to write a report on, say, Mayan culture, and it’s not online, they get mad.

“I’ve encountered people in their mid-late 20s who have that same expectation.”

Although many libraries are slow to change, the expectations of today’s children make that change a certainty.

From books to tools

One of the biggest changes university libraries have seen in recent years is in the number and types of tools available to find information.

"With enhanced catalogs, digital surrogates, linked databases, and the hardware to bring all of these things to the fingertips of a library user, a library user becomes a walking catalog.”

“When libraries got rid of their physical card catalogs in favor of online catalogs, plenty of folks were worried that the experience of finding things, especially by physically browsing library stacks, would be diminished, ” Chris Bourg, Associate University Librarian at Stanford, told Ars. “(But) our catalog SearchWorks, has a feature which allows users to virtually browse the book covers of related items across 17 different campus libraries at once—something that would obviously be impossible to do physically.”

Daryl Green believes recall is one of the great improvements in the technological profile of the modern university library. Green is a rare books librarian at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and an author of the collection’s excellent Echoes from the Vault blog.

“I think that emerging technologies will only make recall quicker in catalogs and databases,” he told Ars. “A reader can trace a foot-noted lead with lightning-fast speed and determine whether the citation they’re following is something that requires their attention or not within a minute of seeing a footnote. Previously, this crucial step in the research process (following the breadcrumbs) was the most labor intensive, but with enhanced catalogs, digital surrogates, linked databases, and, most importantly, the hardware to bring all of these things to the fingertips of a library user, a library user becomes a walking catalog.”

Another change librarians have noted is the university library’s ongoing change to a multiuse space.

“We think of the library as a hybrid environment that consists of physical spaces, people, and objects; as well as a digital entity that provides online access to digital resources, services and tools,” Bourg said about Stanford’s libraries. “But the truth is that technology has simply provided libraries with new ways to fulfill our age-old mission of collecting, preserving, organizing and providing meaningful access to information in support of teaching and research.”

Green agrees.

“The nature of the academic library has always been to provide a platform for research, study, social activity and discovery,” he said. “I think, at its heart, the nature of the library will never really change, but the services that we provide and the role that we play in a student’s or researcher’s life will constantly shift.”

From building to service

Another denizen of the Stanford Library is Elijah Meeks. Not a librarian per se, Meeks is a “digital humanities specialist,” most recently the co-creator of the interactive ORBIS atlas of Roman history. He sees the university libraries in the future behaving like Google.

“I see libraries of the future, those that survive, as acting like high-tech services companies, mini Googles focused on a particular demographic and physical footprint. Like Google providing, as best it can, a massive variety of services, I see the university library doing the same. This Google Model would require more than the cool Google offices and transparent walls (we have some of those in some of our buildings). Instead, it needs small, agile teams focused on doing really good work and recognizing the value created by supporting a broad constituency.”

Steven Gass, associate director for Research and Instructional Services at MIT, sees the economics of the university library as militating toward a consolidation of collections. Satellites and branches have been closed all over the country and Gass sees the future of the university library as one of continuing consolidation of physical collections but mitigated with innovations like “embedded librarians.” These are librarians who live out in the different departments, labs and research centers of a university, responding to the specific needs of their scholars and students.

“Their job,” he told Ars “is to know what those are doing and be proactive and push out relevant material.”

An important role that librarians are going to need to play, according to Gass, is that of online credibility coach. By and large, people know, or learn, often osmotically, what constitutes a credible source in a book. It is a safe bet that a book on Chaucer published by Oxford University Press is going to be more reliable than one published by Hustler. But how to do the same for material that is native to the Web?

“It is a shared goal among colleagues nationwide to promote good information learning skills,” said Gass, “how to identify quality information, to instill new academics with how to think about information, about its quality, to teach the 'tricks of the trade,' so to speak, in assessing accuracy.”

From the capital to the borderlands

This transition time is one of great opportunity for those involved in libraries, but all transitions, all borders and verges, are places of great vulnerability as well. Grand changes are possible here, but so are operatic failures. The future seems promising. It’s the present that worries some librarians.

“The myth that the information scholars need for research and teaching is, or soon will be available for free online is a dangerous one,” said Bourg, “especially when it is used as an excuse to cut funding to libraries. Right now libraries face enormous but exciting challenges in maintaining print collections and services where they are still necessary, while simultaneously developing strategies for collecting, preserving, organizing, and providing access to digital objects. I fear that if libraries across the nation don’t get the resources we collectively need to meet these challenges that we may be at risk of losing big chunks of our cultural record because of a lack of funding for digital collecting and preservation. “

If there is one thing that all librarians worried about, it was this: the de-funding of libraries. It has happened from the university research libraries all the way down to the neighborhood libraries that set expectations students bring when going to college.

Houghton traveled to Denmark last summer and visited the public library in a small, poor town.

“Their library was five times bigger than mine,” she said, “It had better computer technology, better everything.” The reason for that was simple, she said.

“We don’t invest in our libraries.”

Curt Hopkins
Curt writes for Ars Technica about the intersection of culture and technology, including the democratization of information, spaceships, robots, the theatre, archaeology, achives and free speech. Twitter@curthopkins

34 Reader Comments

Bravo, Ars, for posting articles like this. As an academic librarian myself, I've watched these changes accelerate. It's very hard to keep up. We have to meet the needs of students where they are, at point of need.

FYI the photo is of the Fisher Rare Books library at the University of Toronto. It's a little jewel box of climate-controlled closed stacks and is not the typical academic library. It is, however, a very functional donor magnet.

Mr. Hopkins,Inspirational and interesting article. Thank you! On the high school level, we continue to look at how the opposites of “impression” and “expression” exist in our library media center. We strive to have the resources and provide the tools where students can find themselves in the midst of these opposites. I feel that a sufficiently funded one - stop “center” for students and instructors is the most efficient model a high school could program have. We are excited about where we can go! Our home page awww.librarymedia.net reads as follows:

ExperienceTenafly High School’s Lalor Library Media Center continues to set the standard in providing end to end services enabling teachers to teach and students to learn. Populated with the best resources and equipment - supported by the highest quality staff, we seamlessly integrate all media in one centrally located complex. Shakespeare, television broadcast, Xeroxing, Mozart, coffee, conferencing, video editing, maps, novels, computer stations, displays, movies, meetings, art, an academic theater, tape, rulers, and tissues, and much more - all under one roof – literally. Well over 1000 students and faculty use our services daily. Electronically, we reach out to many others via Internet and a 24/7 television broadcast. Every classroom and home in our community and beyond has access providing a valuable school / community / world connection. We regularly receive school library media personnel, school administrators and state officials as they are curious about our facility and want to see it in action. We welcome you – come and experience!

Exploration and ImpressionStudents are encouraged to explore topics related to coursework and discover new interests in spacious and welcoming surroundings. Our library and its contents are designed to encourage students' knowing and liking the world. State-of-the-art technology and a wide range of resources make research efficient and allow students to gain new and different impressions concerning subjects of all kinds.

Creative ExpressionAs students build knowledge concerning various topics, creative expression is encouraged. Included within the library media center complex is a media production lab, and a fully equipped professional television studio flanked with bookshelves and a courtyard backdrop. The library's studio regularly broadcasts programs and events locally and internationally on a wide range of topics.

On Behalf of the WorldStudents are encouraged to make full use of the library media center to further their study, broaden and deepen their minds, and express creativity with a hope that they will use knowledge on behalf of one world we share.

Please please PLEASE can we stop with the version numbers on things like this? We finally got out of that idiotic "Web 2.0" nonsense and we don't need to start up another.

I got so sick of trying to explain to my non-tech acquaintances what Web 2.0 was because they would hear snippets about it here and there and ask "What is Web 2.0? Do I have to upgrade my browsers for that? Will my internet provider charge me for it? I don't think they have it yet, haven't seen anything about upgrading to Web 2.0"....

“Every screen is a touch screen,” she told Ars, “and when it’s not they get confused as hell. Kids expect instant delivery of everything. If you can’t get it right that second, it doesn’t exist. When you tell them that a thing they want doesn’t exist digitally, that it’s a physical thing and that’s it, it blows their mind. If there is some book they need to write a report on, say, Mayan culture, and it’s not online, they get mad.

“I’ve encountered people in their mid-late 20s who have that same expectation.”

I am an IT guy at a library. The library gets used for otyher things besides books now. MY job is growing and the librarians is shrinking.

We have blu-rays,dvds, and video games to take out. Those are always out. We also have a ton of windows 7 machines that get used a Ton. Those two things are the main reason why people visit our library anymore. When our internet connection goes down the library is empty. Another thing that people are doing here are our programs. we have zumba, yoga, defensive driving, and cooking classes. All these programs sell out so to speak within a day or two being posted.

We also are going to start letting people borrow ipads and kindle fires within the library .

We also have free wifi that gets used an awfull lot. Last September we had a hurricane and the surrounding area had no internet or power but we did (underground power rocks) . There were people everywhere. All chairs ful,l people sitting in the stacks using our wifi and power. I had to use one of our servers asa router to handle all the people.

Libraries are changing from books to more of a community center. I work in a branch that is in the middle of a popular village so we get a lot of people.

The one thing that libraries will need help with is their internet connections. I was lucky since we have a small ISP that gave us a 100/100 and a dark fiber connection for $1000 cheaper then lightpath or Verizon could give us. We use our connection a lot since the biggest draw to the library is the public internet terminals and our free wifi.

PS Where did they get the touch screen thing? I have not once witnessed a child trying to use the monitor as a touch screen? I have been working as an It tech here for 6 years.

I enjoy my public library immensely, even though my local government keeps trying to make it less convenient for me to use it. E.g., I was out on a Friday afternoon with some free time (a rarity for me, but I digress), and decided to head over to my nearest branch, which is only about 5 minutes away. What I found was a shut building: Continued budget cuts have forced them to close on Fridays. Perhaps Fridays were one of their traditionally slow days, but every time I'm there they seem to be quite busy.

The only thing that I'm not sure I like is the idea of the embedded librarians with the actual library closed off to patrons. It just strikes me as having the appearance of limiting physical access to the "real" information, and everything is handled through an elite group.

Or maybe I need to quit reading so much sci-fi that is so negative about our future...

“I’ve encountered people in their mid-late 20s who have that same expectation.”

You know, yesterday I was thinking about this. My wife and I were making ice cream (not quite by hand, but with the help of a stand mixer). It's a good lesson in delayed gratification. You have to put the bowl in the freezer for 15 hours. Then you have to prep your ingredients. Then you can mix it together for 20-30 minutes...which doesn't give it the right consistency. You have to put it in the freezer overnight to get the right kind of consistency. So you need to wait at least 24 hours to enjoy your product. Even though we did it with a mixer, almost anyone can make ice cream at home and it's something my family did when I was young.

Sure, I want things NOW just like everyone else but I also know that good things are worth waiting for. Something a lot of people are missing. Maybe they should have made their own ice cream when they were 7 instead of buying it at the store, and then we wouldn't have these problems!

I do think a lot of the problems with libraries are explained by that mentality. Sometimes even the best researchers struggle, teasing it over and over in their brain for days until they have that eureka moment - remembering some untapped resource to search, or finally putting together a magical search query that finds the info right away, or collating information from various authoritative sources to get the necessary result. Allowing kids to think that they should be able to touch a screen and get the info right away is an example of parents doing a disservice to their kids.

Then again, if everyone had critical thinking skills, IT work would dry up real quick and the rest would be all the really hard stuff. No more easy calls to fix a broken mouse by plugging it in, for example

The chief competition for libraries is the Internet at large. The two main advantages left to libraries, the things they do well that the Internet does not are: 1) Curation 2) Preservation. That's where libraries should focus, and give up almost everything else. Physical presence - inconvenient. Discrete, unshared, walled collections - take a page from the Internet and share your collections with every other library.

In fact, I'd like there to be a single global library, or at least a virtual mirage of such, fronting a confederation of those who curate, index and preserve digial artifacts.

“Every screen is a touch screen,” she told Ars, “and when it’s not they get confused as hell. Kids expect instant delivery of everything. If you can’t get it right that second, it doesn’t exist. When you tell them that a thing they want doesn’t exist digitally, that it’s a physical thing and that’s it, it blows their mind. If there is some book they need to write a report on, say, Mayan culture, and it’s not online, they get mad.

“I’ve encountered people in their mid-late 20s who have that same expectation.”

Truly, WTF?! "...it's not online, they get mad." It sounds more like bad parenting in not setting expectations correctly and empowering the temper tantrums. "Gee, Junior wants an iPad for kindergarten. Quick, buy one on the way home, because Junior is wrecking the place."

As for the mind boggling existence of the printed word, perhaps I am a curmudgeon and out of touch, but we have a love of books that we are sharing with our child. And the school's librarians are showing that information can be gotten from more than one reliable source (not just online).

While this may be true (and makes sense) for school libraries the reality here is a slightly different one for public libraries up in my area of Canada.

The library is a place to 'be'. The study tables are large, have power plug-ins and wifi. The kids section has lounging sofas and beanbags with song-and-dance sessions for the little ones. The computers are always booked for facebook and jobsearch. There are DVDs, CDs, magazines and online car-repair databases. Lego-builder clubs and scrabble games are hosted here. It's a much used space for some homeless (and others) to seek refuge with extended hours in the winter. In the outlaying communities the libraries are a hub or sorts and even if they are only open four days, one of them includes an evening.

I see the physical public library space becoming even more relevant - as it has to fight for it.

I think the libary could find new life and extended funding if they moved a lot of school programs away from schools and put them onto the libraries servers. There are libraries dotted through-out cities. They maintain servers for info and such. Bulk up the servers, convert a lot of classes to self-paced modular training. Let kids log-in from home every other day, and do the self-paced training classes housed on the lib servers, which would let us shut down the schools for a few days and reduce the money spent on electricity, A/c, heating, etc. Teachers would still "teach", but be more of a tutor role from home. Or, wild idea... get rid of schools all-together, build out the libraries to include some classrooms, and they could schedule some live classes for students to be on-site a couple of times a week. This would include things like science labs and such. Let the library take over the role of the school, but in a supplemental fashion, since a lot of school can be converted to online course work. As for physical ed and sports, many places have sports fields with rec centers. Those would take over the phys ed aspect of schools. Or, another wild idea... move the big-ass libraries INTO the schools. But, with our current pedo-scared society, nobody wants to allow adults to mingle around a school these days.

The chief competition for libraries is the Internet at large. The two main advantages left to libraries, the things they do well that the Internet does not are: 1) Curation 2) Preservation. That's where libraries should focus, and give up almost everything else. Physical presence - inconvenient.

It's only inconvenient until you need it.

Quote:

Discrete, unshared, walled collections - take a page from the Internet and share your collections with every other library.

Inter-library loans have been a reality since 1894. Wake up, grandpa.

Quote:

In fact, I'd like there to be a single global library, or at least a virtual mirage of such, fronting a confederation of those who curate, index and preserve digial artifacts.

And how will you get that when you don't have internet access? Well, you could go down to the library and use their OH WAIT.

I'm all for the adoption of digital, online, freely available collections of everything for everybody anytime, but nothing you said about libraries actually makes any sense.

The chief competition for libraries is the Internet at large. The two main advantages left to libraries, the things they do well that the Internet does not are: 1) Curation 2) Preservation. That's where libraries should focus, and give up almost everything else. Physical presence - inconvenient.

It's only inconvenient until you need it.

I don't, not if it's all online.

Quote:

Quote:

Discrete, unshared, walled collections - take a page from the Internet and share your collections with every other library.

Inter-library loans have been a reality since 1894. Wake up, grandpa.

So, if there's a book in the British Library I can get it at my local public library? Easily? Fast?

Quote:

Quote:

In fact, I'd like there to be a single global library, or at least a virtual mirage of such, fronting a confederation of those who curate, index and preserve digial artifacts.

And how will you get that when you don't have internet access? Well, you could go down to the library and use their OH WAIT.

I am not sure why libraries have become the vehicle for public internet - but if such is a concern it can be subsidized in other ways that are much more accessible, (for example subsidized or free in-home broadband) and is not a natural part of curating and preserving a collection.

Quote:

I'm all for the adoption of digital, online, freely available collections of everything for everybody anytime, but nothing you said about libraries actually makes any sense.

Because you are talking about the way libraries are, I am talking about the way they will be.

I totally agree with "pepegee" in that the public library is a place to be. My local library is packed three nights per week with kids there for story time, adults who don't have computers and use the library's, people who don't have access to the web, yep, lots of them in my town, and others. We have programs for adults that include gardening, crafts, birding, yoga...

I go there three or four night a week as a way to get out of the house and be a little less introverted. There is wifi and electrical outlets on the tables for those who bring their laptops. My book club meets there, clubs and civic organizations use the facilities regularly for meetings and events. They have lectures, book signings, the list is endless.

Guess what, the paper and much of the public are raising a crazy amount of commotion because they have to pay taxes to support the local library. You can always tell the ones that haven't been through the door of the library because they're the ones that think it is a waste of money.

A public library serves so many purposes it is amazing. There are many ways that it can serve its patrons without a physical presence in the community, but there are many purposes it can't serve without that public presence. Granted, libraries need to move forward with technology and at a faster pace than they tend to, but before you write off your library for being behind the times, go through the doors and see who it serves and how well; I think you'll be surprised how many people DEPEND on it and don't just enjoy it.

I am not sure why libraries have become the vehicle for public internet - but if such is a concern it can be subsidized in other ways that are much more accessible, (for example subsidized or free in-home broadband) and is not a natural part of curating and preserving a collection.

Wow, way to totally miss the point, Captain Oblivious. The question was, how will you get that when you don't have internet access? It doesn't mean, how do you get there when you don't have internet access at home? It means how do you get there when you don't have access, period? For instance, my library was open for a whole 5 contiguous days last year when power was out in the whole region as a result of hurricanes. Nice and quiet, and that it had A/C was nice, too.

We're nowhere close to living in a legal framework that will allow this type of sharing nationally, much less internationally.

So, as funding is being cut to libraries, costs are going up. There's this popular thought that putting things online makes things cheaper. It doesn't just yet. You get into significant licensing costs and issues- you no longer own the materials, you license them, and you have to keep on paying for those licenses over time. And those licenses are expensive.

Then you'd have to get everything digitized. That's expensive and difficult. Most material is not already digital. This is true of books, but libraries (and archives) also hold a lot of unique material, published and unpublished. I find that people greatly underestimate how much physical material is needed from academic libraries (in particular). Because there aren't digital equivalents, and a lot of people don't have the digitization expertise.

I'm sure that the libraries mentioned in this article are in some ways forward thinking in their movement away from the physical. I'm also fairly confident that people tend to underestimate the importance of physicality for certain materials.

Then you've got rights issues. You have people upset about the digitization process before we even get to the sharing part. And once you get to the sharing part... well, it's currently against the law. And you have things like the Google lawsuit and the Georgia State lawsuit going on right now that make us all live in a very uncertain legal environment...

I am not sure why libraries have become the vehicle for public internet - but if such is a concern it can be subsidized in other ways that are much more accessible, (for example subsidized or free in-home broadband) and is not a natural part of curating and preserving a collection.

Wow, way to totally miss the point, Captain Oblivious. The question was, how will you get that when you don't have internet access? It doesn't mean, how do you get there when you don't have internet access at home? It means how do you get there when you don't have access, period? For instance, my library was open for a whole 5 contiguous days last year when power was out in the whole region as a result of hurricanes. Nice and quiet, and that it had A/C was nice, too.

Ah, so the job of libraries is now disaster relief. Sorry, I thought it was to provide access to the worlds store of knowledge. Clearly the best way to do this is via discrete local collections of printed books easily accessible by only local resident. And as a bonus you can surf porn after a hurricane.

We're nowhere close to living in a legal framework that will allow this type of sharing nationally, much less internationally.

So, as funding is being cut to libraries, costs are going up. There's this popular thought that putting things online makes things cheaper. It doesn't just yet. You get into significant licensing costs and issues- you no longer own the materials, you license them, and you have to keep on paying for those licenses over time. And those licenses are expensive.

Then you'd have to get everything digitized. That's expensive and difficult. Most material is not already digital. This is true of books, but libraries (and archives) also hold a lot of unique material, published and unpublished. I find that people greatly underestimate how much physical material is needed from academic libraries (in particular). Because there aren't digital equivalents, and a lot of people don't have the digitization expertise.

I'm sure that the libraries mentioned in this article are in some ways forward thinking in their movement away from the physical. I'm also fairly confident that people tend to underestimate the importance of physicality for certain materials.

Then you've got rights issues. You have people upset about the digitization process before we even get to the sharing part. And once you get to the sharing part... well, it's currently against the law. And you have things like the Google lawsuit and the Georgia State lawsuit going on right now that make us all live in a very uncertain legal environment...

Yes, but how about we work towards this legal framework rather than accept the massive compromise that is library 2.0

Ah, so the job of libraries is now disaster relief. Sorry, I thought it was to provide access to the worlds store of knowledge. Clearly the best way to do this is via discrete local collections of printed books easily accessible by only local resident.

When you factor in storage media and changing formats, wide-spread "discrete local collections of printed books" are a far more efficient and tolerant method of providing access to the world's store of knowledge. Loss of power, or too much power (lighting strikes or blown transformers, for instance) will not affect the written word nearly as much. Having the books available digitally is great, but it is not a replacement for dead trees.

Ah, so the job of libraries is now disaster relief. Sorry, I thought it was to provide access to the worlds store of knowledge. Clearly the best way to do this is via discrete local collections of printed books easily accessible by only local resident.

When you factor in storage media and changing formats, wide-spread "discrete local collections of printed books" are a far more efficient and tolerant method of providing access to the world's store of knowledge. Loss of power, or too much power (lighting strikes or blown transformers, for instance) will not affect the written word nearly as much. Having the books available digitally is great, but it is not a replacement for dead trees.

Yes it is in almost all cases. Digital backup and distribution can ensure against corruption and loss in all but civilization ending events. Frankly I don't much care what happens to libraries when our civilization ends - and those who do care can print out some copies and bury them in the ground somewhere.

This is an incredibly irrational way of looking at what libraries do. Reading a few posts further, I really don't think you and I are going to have a productive discussion.

Yes, because I am not arguing about what libraries do now, I am arguing about what they should do and what they should become. You obviously disagree, and attribute this disagreement to my age and irrationality, rather than your own inability to imagine something different than what currently is.

I didn't assume anything about your age. I simply don't think you fully grasp what libraries do besides store information. Trying to say that libraries should be purely online is crap. A library can't be replaced by some combination of Wikipedia and Askville or whatever. Not all functions of a library can be reduced to an online service. This has little to do with what libraries "currently" are vs. "should become" and more to do with what makes a library.

Great article Mr Hopkins, and that library pictured on top of the article is absolutely gorgeous.

Some people in the 3D-printing (and fabbing in general) community suggest that physical libraries might want to add a small 'fablab' component to their services. We're starting to have huge repositories of physical objects, ready to be send to a laser cutter or a 3D printer, the most famous one being Thingiverse.

Given the exponential growth of such repositories, the need for curators to help find the object you need, whether it's a replacement part for your lab microscope or a small mechanism that can be used to teach some physics principle to students, will probably be very strong in 5 years or less. If any librarians are reading this, what do they think about that idea?

After all, it's not that much different than the 'print-on-demand' systems libraries are starting to be equipped with.

I am an IT guy at a library. The library gets used for otyher things besides books now. MY job is growing and the librarians is shrinking.

I'm an academic librarian and I would have to say my work is definitely not shrinking due to digitisation.

When people come up to the information desk it doesn't matter to me where the information actually sits. It's not like I used to take patrons by the hand and lead them to where the book was on the shelf, well ok sometimes I did.

Physically in the building or in an electronic database, it means nothing to me. Same types of questions get asked today as a decade ago. Only now I'm more likely to be interacting with patrons electronically instead of at the information desk.

Same search strategies need to be taught regardless of the medium. Digitisation just means it's much faster and more accessible.

My biggest challenge is google creating sloppy searchers. Google is really good at finding relevant information on the web with just a few keywords. The same strategy doesn't always transfer well over to academic databases.

"If you actually want to know where most of the innovations, certainly in terms of humanities scholarship have originated, most of them have come from the schools of librarianship and information science."